Philippe Mather

Figures of Estrangement in Science Fiction Film

Abstract. -- This essay offers a descriptive system intended to
address film-specific phenomena in terms consonant with Darko Suvin’s analysis
of the forms of estrangement found in sf literature. I propose a semiotic
analysis of sf film, focusing on a typology of figures of estrangement,
conceived as a centripetal relation between processes of alienation and
naturalization. My typology of figures is based on Louis Hjelmslev’s chart
illustrating the structure of the linguistic sign as adapted by the Belgian Mu
Group. Since the sf genre’s distinctive traits are not tied to medium-specific
criteria, I argue that a structural approach can usefully characterize sf film’s
formal strategies without severing its rhetorical and ideological ties to other
forms of sf, including literature.

Cornelius Partsch

Paul Scheerbart and the Art of Science Fiction

Abstract. -- Science fiction studies has long been an interpretive
arena marked by the discontents of the overarching generic classification.
Through a reading of Paul Scheerbart’s Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel
(1910), a text that operates on the edges of several genres, this article
examines the historical and conceptual differences between Anglo-American and
German sf scholarship and derives from recent genre theory a critical principle
of explicit openness, one in which genre can become constitutive of complex and
hybrid narratives. Scheerbart’s text refers extensively to its discursive
environment, drawing on both fictional and scientific writing—including
popular, alternative, and speculative science—as well as some of the important
cultural debates of its time. Parallel to its evolutionist plot, the
construction of a gigantic tower as a means to finding the "secret" of
life and to advancing the species, Lesabéndio is itself a highly
contrived and dynamic narrative edifice. It challenges its readers to move in
and out of generic ideas, discursive formations, and, as sf, to negotiate the
interactions between cognition and estrangement.

George Slusser and Danièle
Chatelain

Abstract. -- Sf narrative, at its origins, makes use
of two conventional narrative forms: the travel narrative and the historical
narrative. Working according to its material imperative, sf has also seen
scientific discoveries challenge these conventions and ultimately prove them
inadequate. This is especially true in the case of the sf narrative conveying
information about unknown worlds of the past or future to its reader. Some sf
narratives, even in situations of extreme displacement of the narrator’s
audience in relation to its flesh and blood reader, continue contrafactually to
rely on conventional forms and to shut their eyes to the problem. Others,
however, such as those discussed in this essay, both are aware of problems
created by spatiotemporal displacement and clearly seek to develop new narrative
patterns to deal with them. "Newness" in sf is usually claimed for
themes and content. Theme and form are inseparable, however, and we hope to show
how sf, in responding to new time-space situations generated by science, proves
highly creative on the formal level as well.

Richard Swope

Science Fiction Cinema and the Crime of Social-Spatial
Reality

Abstract. -- This article analyzes the recent films Dark City
and The Thirteenth Floor (both 1998) as metaphysical detective stories in
which the detective protagonist’s investigation of a murder turns into a
confrontation with the nature and limits of the spaces he inhabits. Using Henri
Lefebvre’s notion that space is a social product, I suggest that both films
contribute to an understanding of the production of social space in their
exploration of the recent technological "advances" through which late
capitalism has sought to extend its reign over space and of the role that
virtual spaces have played within the "ideological fantasy" that
constitutes our present social (spatial) reality. I conclude that these films
ultimately reveal that while "advanced" technologies promise to
produce new, liberated spaces, they in fact extend the Enlightenment/capitalist
dream of a social space that can be rationally ordered and controlled.